'Jeopardy!' tournament: Everyone's stumped by final clue, including SW FL's Claire Sattler

Claire Sattler was in the lead by the time she reached the Final Jeopardy round on the “Jeopardy!” High School Reunion Tournament.

But not by much.

“It was a really intense game," Sattler said after her semifinals game on "Jeopardy!" "It all came down to Final Jeopardy."

Monday’s game was a tight one, with scores rising and falling and rising again as players tested their knowledge in categories ranging from history and book sequels to quotable TV shows and pop music.

Sattler, 21, trailed in third place at the end of the first round, but then the former Bonita Springs resident shot to first after wrapping up the Double Jeopardy round with a score of $8,600.

Her opponents — Justin Bolsen and Stephanie Pierson of Georgia — had earned $8,400 and $5,200, respectively.

Then came the Final Jeopardy history clue: “An 1869 Presidential Pardon Was Granted To This Man, Due In Part To A Plea By The Medical Society of Harford County, Maryland.”

And all three contestants were stumped.

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The answer was Samuel Mudd, the doctor who infamously set the broken leg of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. But none of the contestants knew it — and that cost them.

Sattler guessed John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, and lost nearly all her money in the process. She was left with just $399.

Justin Bolsen of Canton, Georgia, lost money, too. But he still had enough — $6,399 — to win the semifinals game and move on to the tournament’s finals later this week.

“Congratulations, Justin,” said host Mayim Bialik. “You are our Jeopardy champion, and you are advancing to the finals. Well done!”

As for Sattler, her time in the High School Reunion is over. She left the show with a $10,000 consolation prize instead of the grand prize of $100,000 and a spot in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions.

'It was a great experience,' Claire Sattler says

That’s OK, though. Sattler said she was excited just to make it into the semifinals.

Her mission, she said, was to “go out and put up a good fight.” And she did just that.

“My goal going back was to make it to the semifinals, which was twice as hard as it was last time because there were twice the competitors and the same number of spots," she said. "And I was super-happy to just hold my own up there, even though I haven’t done trivia in a long time.

"Yeah, I think overall it was a really good experience, especially getting to see all my friends.”

The tournament features 27 former contestants from the annual “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament. The episodes were filmed in January.

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Sattler previously won the “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament in 2018, but she said the competition in this new tournament was more intense.

“I was nervous because all the other people who have advanced so far … are all phenomenal players,” she said last week. “So I was like, well, any of them, if I play, there’s a chance I get absolutely beaten to a pulp (laughs).

“But that’s how the game works, and it all comes down to the categories, the buzzer. These were also great friends of mine, and as I said before, I’d be honored to lose to any of them.”

The Bishop Verot High graduate − now a senior at Yale University − won $18,411 in last week’s quarterfinals.

That Final Jeopardy Clue was a "crazy one"

Overall, Monday's game was an odd experience, Sattler says. For one thing, the show's producers kept starting and stopping the game to fact-check the contestants' answers.

“It made the flow very strange," Sattler said. "I think it took us an hour and half to film this episode. … I think it kind of disrupts everybody’s flow.

"I wouldn’t say the stopping and starting gives anybody an advantage or disadvantage. You’re just up there longer. You’re under the light. It was a weird one, honestly.”

Then there was that Final Jeopardy clue. None of the contestants knew the answer, although Sattler was closer than any of them by writing "Booth."

She knew it was Booth's doctor, she said, and almost wrote down "Booth's doctor." But she didn't think the answer would be accepted.

“I went, ‘Ah, God, I should’ve paid more attention to 'National Treasure 2,'” she said and laughed. “'Cause they do talk about him in 'National Treasure 2.'”

Sattler thought it was an obscure historical clue, and she said only two of the tournament's 27 contestants knew the doctor's name. They just weren't taught that in school.

"They don’t really teach his name," she said. "I knew a doctor had fixed his leg, that he had broken his leg.

"I took U.S. history — I took AP history — but I think the curriculum as it exists now focuses more on trends and general movements and themes than it does on what is the specific name and the specific date of a lot of these things. ... That Final Jeopardy question was a crazy one for us."

Another weird occurrence: Host Bialik accidentally blurted out the answer to one clue after contestant Pierson mispronounced the name of environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Sattler wonders if that might have cost her the game. They edited Bialik's accident out of the broadcast, she said, but no one was able to buzz in since the answer had already been said out loud.

“It was just the way that the game works," Sattler said. "Justin was an absolute beast on the buzzer. (But) there’s a little, tiny part of me − not to dwell on the past − but there’s a little, tiny part of me that’s like, ‘Ugh, if they had let us buzz in on that, Justin would’ve beat me to the buzzer, he would’ve been leading in Final Jeopardy and the roles would’ve been switched.'

"But there’s nothing you can do about it. It is as much a game of skill as it is of luck. Not to say that Justin’s not also extremely bright and very good at the game, but there is an element of luck to it.”

“Jeopardy!” is a syndicated show that appears weeknights on various TV networks nationwide. It airs at 7:30 p.m. on Southwest Florida’s NBC2.

Learn more about the “Jeopardy!” High School Reunion at https://www.jeopardy.com/contestant-zone/2023/high-school-reunion.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1). You can also call at 239-335-0368.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Claire Sattler stumped on 'Jeopardy!': Did she win Monday night?